Read the absolutely brilliant time loop xavier/yasper fic Roman Holiday by @deaddeerdonoteat and was hit with another yasvier time loop brain worm, with xavier in the loop this time!
the concept being similar in that xavier doesn't reset every new day from the moment he wakes up but instead resets in the middle of the afterparty every time. and he is trying to survive the party, but it doesnāt really work. he evades yasper. chelsea kills him. he evades chelsea and yasper. idk, fucking walt?? kills him. etc etc. xavier just trying to avoid death. thinks, okay, i need to reconcile with yasper!!
as deaddeernoteat said, the set up of the show is such that any one of them could have killed Xavier, so why not see all the scenarios in which Xavier might have been murdered by everyone else in combination with his attempts to escape being murdered by anyone??
And, theyāre so right for that!! I do think it was also the whole, angry and dangerous predator vibes yasper gave off when he cornered and murdered xavier (amazing performance by ben schwartz truly) that, really really affected me in a way that i cannot unsee it, this lurking danger within yasperāand how i do think that the whole, betrayal/rejection affected yasper in such a way because there was also love thereāthat it hurt yasper this much and pushed him to such lengths because it was Eugene.
Is it healthy?? Not at all. I want more.
And, in the same vein of deaddeerdonoteatās āxavier is my beautiful princess with a disorderā tags, i am being tormented by VISIONS.
In hopfully not that fragmented of an explanation, the time loop concept is this:
You have Xavier who is both helpless and cunning in his survival, and Yasper as someone who desperately needs to be needed, and whose love for Eugene is what made his reaction to the rejection and the, argument? if it could be called that?? so violent in the first place
Xavier is gorgeous and extra and troubled, but heās also aware of it in this deeply dramatic, performative way that somehow makes you want to protect him and smack him at the same time. (and yet, is also very repressed abt certain things!! will not acknowledge his ED or certain events in his life as harmfulāthey are just things that happened to him and it was fine. it was fine.)
but the thing is; here, in this moment, in these loops, he does need protectingāhe keeps dying at his own party! Every time! Sometimes violently! Sometimes tragically! Sometimes absurdly! Like yes, Walt of all people might actually kill him in one loop and heāll be sobbing about it for the next ten.
And through it all, Xavier starts to realize the key to surviving isnāt just evading Yasper, Chelsea, Walt, whoeverāitās understanding them. Especially Yasper.
Because yeah, Yasper kills him in the first loop. Because it was XavierāGenieāwho rejected him, who humiliated him, who called him a loser. To Yasper, it wasnāt just rejectionāit was devastation. Betrayal. So the murder, while extreme, was deeply emotional: Eugene was the only one who mattered enough to trigger that kind of break.
And Xavier gets that. Like, loop after loop, dying over and over again, he starts realizing he needs to appeal to Yasperānot just to survive, but because there's this deep, old wound between them thatās still festering. He needs Yasperās protection, sure, but alsoāhe starts to see how much Yasper needs to be needed. Yasper wants to take care of someone beautiful, someone fragile and bright and fucked up in just the right way that it makes him feel strong. Useful. Loved.
So Xavier starts calculating, because he canāt be normal about it naturally, heās gotta be manipulative, and thinks: if I can get him on my sideāif I can be the one beautiful broken thing heāll fight for instead of destroyāmaybe Iāll live through this party.
But itās hard. Because Xavier remembers what Yasper did. And worse: he remembers what he did, too. How cruel he was. How much he wanted to hurt Yasper for making him feel small back in high school. That pain is still sharp. But maybe the worst part isā¦ the possibility that under all that hurt, he still wants him. Still wants to be wanted by him. That fucked-up, desperate once soft and sweet teenage fantasy didnāt go awayāit just curdled into something thorny and fragile.
So now Xavierās looping through this endless party, dying in increasingly ridiculous and horrifying ways, trying to figure out how to survive a night where every person might be his killerāand his best shot might be the man who once loved him so much he killed him.
edit; post 1/3 of yasvier time loop.
